Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor, columnist and reporter for 40 years. He welcomes comment at [email protected].
When I first encountered Graham Platner at a rally in Augusta last fall, I knew immediately that this was something I’d never seen before in Maine politics. The event had already been shifted to a larger venue. Even then, more than 100 more people had gathered outside. Platner went out to speak to them first before coming back in for the “main event.”
Much of the audience represented veteran Maine Democrats, many of them expecting to support Janet Mills against Susan Collins, and I could see they were skeptical but impressed. In a hoarse, gravelly voice Platner insisted that the leadership of both political parties has failed Americans, more interested in preserving their power than in restoring a federal government that once attended to their needs, but no longer does.
Days later, the Reddit posts unearthed by “opposition research” dropped, and from all sides came the prediction that Platner’s campaign couldn’t survive. Instead it grew stronger. Astonishingly, six months later, it was the two-term Maine governor who dropped out, not the political newcomer.
That morning, I interviewed Platner, and he met my own skepticism head-on. He’s been pursuing the national consensus most Americans actually agree on: establishing universal healthcare, restoring a fair tax system and empowering workers to join together.
Many campaigns have talked about these issues, but progress toward them has been minimal. There’s a reason for that, Platner said. “Those who control our political system essentially need to convince us that big things can’t happen because they themselves don’t want to do it.”
Most Democrats in Congress are focused on restoring Affordable Care Act subsidies for private insurance policies, but Platner said, “We cannot reform health insurance because it’s broken. Even the Cato Institute” — a libertarian think tank — “has concluded it’s going to be cheaper and easier to administer a universal, national system.”
Platner sees himself as a messenger and a vehicle for change, not just as a candidate looking for votes. His inexperience in public office, from this perspective, is exactly the point: “You cannot experience solidarity by staying at home, you can’t explain it. The way to build a broad-based movement is to be there with others.”
So far, “It’s working,” he said. His campaign estimates that nearly 20,000 people have attended his 60-plus town halls to date, and 15,000 have volunteered — extraordinary numbers. “Most of them have never been engaged in politics before,” he said. “To me, that’s the core of it.”
Nor is he in any doubt that the federal government needs to be recalled to the principles of the New Deal. “This country built the highway system, it completed rural electrification in 10 years. We had business regulation and strong unions.” Now, he said, government “has abdicated its role.” Big issues like energy, housing and transportation “can’t be addressed without reimagining the purpose of the federal government.”
Turning over larger and larger portions of government’s traditional role to the private sector has led to both parties representing corporate interests at the expense of those who have to earn a living, and struggle to do so: “We have hundreds of billionaires, and a $7.25 federal minimum wage.”
But for Platner, nothing crystalizes Washington’s mismanagement more than the ongoing war with Iran. His own bitter experience fighting in the “forever wars” of Iraq and Afghanistan has convinced him — and now others — that we need “loud voices” and not “hemming and hawing” to reverse course.
The Iraq invasion’s rationale was “utterly ridiculous,” and now in Iran “they don’t even have the decency to try to trick us.” And yet, he said, “Tucker Carlson makes a better argument against the war than Democratic leaders in Congress.” The Democratic Party “needs to become the anti-war party. There is no other course.”
Americans, Platner believes, are moving decisively against the policies that led to unauthorized wars that have no purpose, and no outcome that could justify them. “Everybody knows this can’t work,” he said. “Now, we have to harness that discontent.”
Voters will determine who takes and keeps power, starting in November, he said. In that sense, it’s simple: “We need to put people in positions of power who will accomplish what Americans have long wanted to do.”
Slogans are not enough, though. Only detailed plans that can be implemented quickly and decisively will translate the people’s will into effective policy, in his view.
Next Thursday, we’ll take a more detailed look at Platner’s positions on some important but intractable issues, and how he thinks we can break the political deadlock.